h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I drove 40 miles while the first half was on yesterday, and it was like a B movie. You know the one where a person wakes up and finds that the whole community has vanished and they are ALONE. They find traces that someone was there a very short time ago, but nobody is to be found.
It was very strange.

It was a bit like that on here as well, anyone who knew nothing of football would think half the researchers had been vapourised

It sounds like the September saturday when the were burying some blond who got herself killed by allowing a pissed driver to drive. For some reason everyone stayed indoors watching it, I was helping some friends move house, traffic? what traffic? my mate mange 110+ on his bike on near deserted roads.

Yesterday I was enjoying faster than normal internet surfing (for a Saturday night)

CH

Days ago two teams met...
well, I´m German, but I had something better to do...
have fun with other bikers.
The ones who organised the CX500(that´s a Honda)-party couldn´t help but make an announcement that Germany has lost. Imagine a whole field full of German Bikers and everyone of them nearly broke down laughing.
(Well, maybe not laughing, but noone cried or sobbed...)
So, I think it´s not that important.
I hope the English stay in the contest.
Cheers

Hanyorilla

Good to see bikers in other countries care about football just as much as most bikers I know in this country (UK), some connection? Genetics? or just a realization there are more important things in life.

CH

i think perhaps that there is some truth to the theory about sports being the modern equivilent of the ancient blood sports and that this may explain somewhat why so many take it so seriously, personaly i think any display of nationalism is a rather sad example of the many hurdles to mental evolution and when you consider how far we have come in relation to so many other racial/cultural differnces it is a crying shame that an ideology like nationalism (which is almost purely a 20th century phenomenon and largely the result of an inability to cope with the loss of power due to the breakdown of imperialism) still exists.
Oh, in answer to the original question, not being an england supporter i can say with some mirth that after todays game im sure there will be alot less people watching euro2000.

As an american I'm confused. Our football is not your football. Ours is soccer. But our football is actually a bastardized rugby. So this is what I want to know... what the heck is rugby anyway?

I was watching it on our international sports station (Americans have too many television stations) and it made no sense.

The difference is that in our "football" the men wear helmets and pads, in your "rugby" they wear soccer shorts.

In rugby the play goes on and on. In football there are downs.

You can pick up the ball kick it, run with it and kick it. That's rugby... in football if the ball touches the ground the play is over.


Then there are "scrums." What in bloody blazes does this accomplish. (By the way, in the U.S. words like bloody and shag are not bad words...see "Austin Powers") These guys push at each other like a reverse tug of war (do they play that in the U.K.?).


Please someone explain rugby to me.

I sort of get soccer (but not the popularity). Back and forth. Back and forth. Back and forth. When the final score after 90 minutes of play is only 1-0, you know you have found a boring game. (See Canada's game of hockey.)

Rugby is regarded by some purists as a more 'authentic' sport than football, and while I'm hardly an expert here I think this can be tracked down to two basic reasons :-

1 - It tends to be played by hefty grizzly blokes who wouldn't be out of place standing in front of a dodgy nightclub looking Not Particularly Friendly. Whereas footballers are normally at least as concerned with their haircuts as with their passing skills (witness Keegan's failures the other evening), and are consequently regarded by the aforementioned grizzlies as glamour boys, or suchlike.

2- It is the older of the two sports, dating (I believe) from the early to middle nineteenth century, whereas football only really came into existence as a separate sport in the late nineteenth century. In fact, I think football was actually derived from rugby, in the first place, so I suppose the latter does have a genuine claim to be more 'authentic'.

As for the rules, I'm afraid I haven't got a clue. So I don't suppose I've really answered your questions at all. Never mind...

And the other half?

I must admit I didn't watch it yesterday, but hope England do well – they’ve made it to the quarter finals, so honour's been satisfied and we can be knocked out content.

I did put my £2 in for the office football draw, and was given Germany, so there's £20 in it for me if they win.

<BB<

Hehe, i saw this and only realised that it was from over a decade ago when reading the last two posts...nothing ever changes